The importance of remembering who you are

Monday

May 27, 2013 at 5:20 PM

With a name like Marketta, you’re bound to have nicknames. That is, unless you have a mama like mine. Growing up there were countless people who tried to shorten my name but each person was corrected – firmly – by Mama. She named me Marketta, she’d say, and that’s exactly what she wanted me to […]

simplyfaithful

With a name like Marketta, you’re bound to have nicknames. That is, unless you have a mama like mine.

Growing up there were countless people who tried to shorten my name but each person was corrected – firmly – by Mama. She named me Marketta, she’d say, and that’s exactly what she wanted me to be called.

At times it was a little frustrating, and even a tad embarrassing when I was a teenager, but on this one point Mama was unmovable. I had no choice but to go along with it.

Somewhere along the way, I guess I succumbed to the brainwashing because I started to get irritated when people said my name was too difficult to pronounce or when they’d ask if I had a nickname that was easier to remember.

“You can call me Marketta,” I’d hear myself say firmly. And then I started to get it, how this really wasn’t a battle over nicknames. I got a glimpse of what Mama had been trying to teach me: Not to budge on who I am.

Life has a way of knocking us down and trying to slap labels on our foreheads. If we listen to some people, we can start to believe we’re failures or we’re lazy – that we’re not contributing anything of meaning and that we’re not worth remembering, no matter how short our names are.

It’s one of the biggest lies in the universe, this idea that we’re defined by what naysayers think of us or by what they want to call us. Still, sometimes I fall for it. That is, until I remember who I am and Whom I serve.

I believe in a God who literally filled the depths of the oceans and placed each star precisely in the sky, a God whose power and compassion I can’t even begin to describe. And in my mind, it’s that awe-inspiring God who says we’re loved, forgiven and cherished. I can’t help but give His opinion a little more weight than what the average person thinks.